Roy Gluckman, expert facilitator and speaker

Leadership facilitator · Speaker

Teams don't lack honesty. They lack the conditions for it.

I work with leadership teams and the organisations they lead. Fourteen years in the most emotive rooms in corporate life has taught me to hear what a group is carrying beneath the words, and to make it safe enough to say out loud, so leaders can go back out and lead differently.

  • 14Years facilitating
  • 100+Organisations worked with
  • 5Continents worked across, from exco tables to the shop floor

How I work

Why leaders bring me in

01

I feel what a room is carrying

I can feel the emotion, tension and potential in a group. Naming it gently unlocks the real conversation: unspoken needs, unquestioned habits, the stories we carry into work.

02

I work with a power informed lens

Most facilitation asks for openness without counting the risk. I work with a trauma informed view of identity, power and risk, so people move from performed vulnerability to real connection.

03

I make complex things simple

Cohesion, psychological safety, inclusion and vulnerability are crowded with jargon. I make them clear enough to use.

04

I hold space with nuance

My approach is a secured softness. No blame, no shame. Just a deeply human understanding that people are complicated, and that how we show up at work is shaped by far more than work.

Why it matters

What goes unsaid between people does not disappear. It leaks into execution and into the layers below. Surfacing it is the difference between a team that works and a team that works well.

Stream 01

DEIB

My DEIB work covers a wide range of topics and formats: keynotes, awareness sessions, masterclasses and longer form training programmes. It is still the work I am most requested for. People leave understanding something about themselves, and something about each other.

Who books this Heads of DEI, internal communications, employee resource groups, and L&D and wellness teams, usually against an observance calendar or a culture programme.

Belonging

Belonging as behaviour, not atmosphere. What it actually asks of an organisation, why the people who have it rarely notice, and the everyday signals that quietly tell others they do not.

  • Belonging, inclusion and tolerance
  • The everyday signals that exclude
  • Belonging as a leadership habit
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Psychological safety

Unpacking psychological safety: to feel safe is to thrive. Why capable teams stay quiet about what they can see clearly, and how safe relationships turn a workplace into one of trust, support and real performance.

  • What silence is telling you
  • Safety as performance, not comfort
  • Disagreement without damage
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Unconscious bias

For anyone making people decisions: hiring, promotion, dismissal. We look at how bias forms around what feels safe, familiar, valuable and likeable, and how that quietly shapes who gets chosen.

  • What bias is, and what it is not
  • Where bias enters a people decision
  • Interrupting bias in the moment
45 to 60 min · Enquire

LGBTIQA+

Three sessions, matched to where your organisation is: from the foundations and Pride basics through to supporting queer families and embedding safety and belonging for LGBTIQA+ colleagues.

  • Terminology, clearly explained
  • Heteronormativity and “common sense”
  • Active allyship, not passive support
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Masculinity

Often run for International Men’s Day. How traditional expectations of masculinity shape men’s wellbeing, leadership and working relationships, and what men can do to build healthier, more inclusive cultures.

  • The impact of traditional masculinity at work
  • Authenticity and vulnerability for men
  • Men as active allies for gender equity
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Generational diversity

Many managers feel they are managing on eggshells around Gen Z. This session moves from fear to understanding: what drives each generation, where the tensions really come from, and how to harness what younger colleagues bring.

  • What each generation actually wants
  • Inter-generational tension, decoded
  • Gen Z as a catalyst, not a problem
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Sexual harassment and bullying

Beyond simple answers. The grey areas and real organisational complexity of sexual harassment, harassment and bullying, with clear frameworks and evidence-based strategies to help people create safer workplaces with confidence.

  • Where the lines really sit
  • Power, silence and speaking up
  • Responding well when it happens
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Disability and neurodiversity

The shift from basic accessibility to genuine belonging. Cutting through the nuance of disability and neurodiversity, with clear frameworks on inclusive language and the confidence leaders need to build a culture where everyone feels valued.

  • Accessibility versus belonging
  • Inclusive language, with confidence
  • Neurodiversity at work
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Is DEI dead?

Starting from a provocative question: what does DEI really mean in today’s climate? The session moves DEI away from “the right thing to do” towards measurable impact on performance, with practical strategies for building stronger teams.

  • Where DEI honestly stands now
  • From moral case to performance case
  • What still works, and why
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Selected clients

HPHeinekenIndeedUnileverAllianzAbsaMTN
FormatsKeynote, awareness session, masterclass or multi-session programme
Audience20 to 20,000, in person or online, worldwide
Also availableRace and privilege
Enquire about this

Stream 02

Leadership Team Facilitation

EXHALE is a team cohesion session for intact leadership teams: a half or full day of deliberate space to connect, and to look at the undercurrents that get in the way of working well together. Some teams come to reconnect. Some come to have honest conversations about how they work. Some come to find their footing together through change and uncertainty. It is not a strategy day. It is about connection, space and dialogue.

Who books this Exco and senior leadership teams, intact teams looking to improve how they perform together, and the HR and people directors who support them.

Teams needing to connect

New members joining, a shift in operating model, a hard year, or simply a long stretch since the team last properly talked. Space to reconnect as people, rebuild trust, and remember why you work well together.

  • Space to name the pressure a team is carrying
  • Rebuilding trust after a demanding period
  • Reconnecting as people, not just colleagues
Half or full day · Enquire

Teams in change

Restructure, merger, new leadership, new strategy. The moment people start guarding position and guessing, exactly when a team most needs to be straight with each other.

  • Naming what is actually uncertain
  • What we can still trust in each other when the ground shifts
  • Connection as a way to feel steadier through change
Half or full day · Enquire

Teams leading change

For any team responsible for driving change: programme teams, functional leads carrying a new operating model into the business. Space to step back from delivery, look honestly at the impact on people, on ways of working and on yourselves, and reconnect to why the change matters.

  • The human impact of a new operating model
  • Reconnecting to the vision behind the change
  • Bringing stakeholders with you, not just informing them
Half or full day · Enquire

Selected clients

NissanNedbankJoe PublicContinentalZutari
FormatHalf or full day, designed to your brief after one conversation
Group sizeBest under 25
DeliveryIn person
Enquire about this

Stream 03

Executive Education

Every leader now leads diversity: of background, generation, identity, culture and opinion. Diversity and identity fundamentally shape how we see our own value, and the value of others. To unlock the value of a diverse team, a leader needs to understand identity, history, the baggage we carry and the voices we have internalised. Leading inclusively means seeing beyond the colleague to the human being: complex, nuanced and shaped by all of it. But it starts with how I see myself. Seeing my own humanity, and understanding how that complexity shapes the way I lead. Most leadership programmes never create the space for this. Mine fills that gap.

Available as guest lectures, modules and programme contributions for MBA, EMBA and leadership development audiences.

Who books this Programme directors, faculty leads and executive education teams at business schools, universities and corporate academies.

Flagship module

Inclusive Leadership

It builds self-awareness first, how leaders lead themselves, then the inclusive leadership skillset: practical skills for creating psychological safety in diverse teams, so that difference becomes a source of cohesion and high performance rather than friction.

The gold standard is a two-day module. Also available as a shorter guest session or programme contribution.

  • Self-awareness: what I carry and how it shapes how I lead
  • Identity, value and how diverse teams show up
  • Creating psychological safety across difference
Two days · Enquire

Selected clients

University of Stellenbosch Business SchoolEnterprises University of Pretoria
FormatTwo-day module, or shorter guest session
DeliveryIn person or virtual
AudienceMBA, EMBA and leadership development cohorts
Enquire about this
HPUnileverMercedes-BenzToyotaHeinekenAllianzBoschAmgenRed HatIndeedHogan LovellsHerbert Smith FreehillsCovingtonOgilvyNissanBridgestoneContinentalVodacomNedbankAbsa
Portrait of Roy Gluckman

About

The hardest rooms in corporate life.

I spent fourteen years in DEIB facilitation. Those rooms deal in identity, exclusion, shame and the fear of getting it wrong in front of colleagues. They are the most emotionally exposed spaces most organisations ever create, and running them well teaches you something that transfers everywhere.

What it taught me is how to feel into a space. To hear the words being said and, underneath them, the fears and hesitations shaping what does not get said. Often the group itself does not know those things are there. My work is to surface them gently, make them visible, and make it safe enough for the room to deal with them.

DEIB work also taught me something I did not expect. In rooms where people share who they are and where they come from, something shifts between them. Given a deliberate space to talk about our humanity, colleagues stop being roles to each other. The relationships go deeper, trust builds faster, and teams hold together in a way no process can produce on its own.

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Roy facilitating a small leadership group
Leadership group facilitation
Roy on stage at a large conference
Conference stage
Roy Gluckman

Tell me what the room needs to leave with.

Twenty minutes is usually enough to work out whether I'm the right person for it, and I will tell you if I am not.

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